OneAndOneIs2

There was an article on the BBC a few days ago. About global warming vs. the GDP.

Essentially, somebody is making the argument that it's not possible for a country to increase its GDP (Essentially, it's overall profitability) without simultaneously increasing its pollution and ecological impact.

This is something I disagree with - I'll come to the "why" later - but it underlines the single biggest problem that the climate change/global warming issue faces today.

Simply, it's that the whole thing has ceased to be a scientific concept, and has moved instead to become a political one.

Simple measure: How much of what the average person knows about climate change comes from studying peer-reviewed scientific findings; and how much comes from mass-media, written and presented by journalists with no background in science and no obligation to meet even basic scientific rigour?

More importantly, who's making the decisions about how to deal with it? Scientists or politicians?

Why is it bad if its the latter? Because science is based on fact whereas politics is based on opinion. The whole point of democracy is that it's the most popular candidate the gets voted in, and the most popular laws that get passed.

There have been plenty of scientific theories that were very popular but were displaced by a small minority because the facts didn't fit. The Earth being an unmoving object at the center of the universe, creationism,.. nobody wanted them to be wrong, but popularity was irrelevant when the facts didn't fit. Nobody wanted to believe in plate tectonics or micro-organisms, but they still made it through. Popularity is irrelevant in science, but it's vital in politics. Science is based on "All the facts point to.." whilst politics is generally based on "Everybody thinks..."

Worse, politics is in the hands of the politicians. And that means that political matters are decided on two factors: Popularity and money.

Politicians tend to make up their minds based on these two factors far more then they depend on little things like scientific evidence. Politicians have to make sure people will vote for them, that means that it's more or less a given that they'll have to do things that they don't want to, or even that they are certain are wrong, just because their voters want them to. And those who aren't busy worrying about what people think of them seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in finding ways to cash in on their position.

Here's an example of what I mean: Climate change is all about CO2. We're digging too much carbon out of the ground, where it's harmlessly locked away, and burning it so we fill the environment with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.

That much, at least, is pretty much undisputed.

So if the problem is that there's too much CO2 in the environment, the solution is twofold: Firstly, cutting down on the amount of CO2 going IN. Secondly, maximising ways of getting CO2 back OUT.

There's rather a lot of bias on the former approach. I tend to believe that a lot of this is because people love being able to stop other people doing things that they don't approve of. "Why do they have to drive those great SUVs? They don't need one just to drive to an office every day!" etc. etc.

It's an age-old attitude. The Duke of Wellington was opposed to cheap rail travel because it would only encourage "the lower orders" to move around. Today we have a climate-change tax on cheap air flights for what amounts to the same reason: People who can afford expensive trips abroad don't want to be surrounded by people who have suddenly been able to buy a cheap flight to the same destination.

Anyway. Back on point. Cutting down on how much CO2 is produced will only cause a reduction in the amount of the stuff in the environment if CO2 is taken back out again. As luck would have it, the planet has a vast infrastructure devoted to doing this very thing. They're called "plants" and they're one of the few forms of life that are found on every continent and most habitats on the planet.

There's already a few lacklustre approaches to harnessing plants: You can pay some company or other to plant trees for you to cut down on your carbon footprint.

But there's one or two people thinking on a rather bigger scale...

Photosynthesis happens all over the world, but it happens more in some places than in others. If you want to find the place where major carbon sequestration takes place, you need to get away from your local trees and fields. You can completely ignore the rainforests, which are trivially unimportant when it comes to net carbon absorption. Those forests might be big, they might have massive trees in them, but if you want REAL photosynthesis power, you need to set your sights lower and smaller.

Sea plankton is responsible for more photosynthesis than every other type of plant combined. Yep. Those tiny little green plants you can't even see are what keep us all breathing.

Trouble is, they're on the decline lately. If you think humanity is mucking things up on land, you have no idea how badly we've decimated the sea. Even the most commonplace food fish like cod and sardines have been pushed to commercial extinction - one of those "science vs. politics" problems where the facts showed that fishing of a species needed to be banned for it to survive, but the government wasn't willing to face the condemnation of the fishing industry or the unemployment it would cause.

We've over-fished because we don't stop hunting until we can't find what we're looking for any more. We've wiped out habitats because we don't see all the life under the surface of the water so we don't care that we've wiped it out. We've polluted because we don't live in the sea so we're fine with dumping our waste into it.

Fish, sharks, whales.. they're all in trouble. The seas are not what they used to be, and that's starting to impact on the most vital organisms on the planet: The plankton that produces all the oxygen.

Thing is, it's easy to stimulate plankton growth. There's plenty of water, sunlight, and CO2 for these little plants to use. It's trace minerals and the less-important stuff that's causing them problems right now.

A major issue is an iron deficiency. This has been clearly demonstrated by the simple expedient of adding iron to waters high in nutrients yet with little plankton growth. There was a big plankton bloom as soon as the iron deficiency was addressed.

A while ago, an ex-greenpeace activist named Russ George decided to take advantage of this fact. The ratio of iron-in to CO2-out is astonishing. Iron is only needed in trace amounts, so for every tonne of iron you put IN, you get enough plankton growth to absorb over a third of a MILLION tonnes of CO2.

Yep. 367,000:1 is the ratio. Pretty impressive, huh?

Curing the iron deficiency in the sea would cause a huge bloom of plankton. That plankton would absorb CO2, reversing the acidification of the oceans and any climate change induced by CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It would ALSO mean a huge increase in available food for pelagic animals. Sharks and whales don't eat algae, but fish and krill do. And then they get eaten by the big guys. Increases in food availability are generally linked to population explosions, which pretty much all fish and marine mammals could do with at the moment.

And to top it all off, it's all done by adding something to the oceans that it badly needs and is very cheap to supply. Mr George tested the theory by buying some iron oxide powder, which is a mere $700 a tonne, and poured it in. After checking data from one of NASA's satellite-mounted chlorophyll cameras, he decided to go for bigger-scale.

So, what do you think Greenpeace's response was to this simple approach of addressing a mineral deficiency in the sea to reverse CO2 damage?

Praise? Cautious optimism?

Nope. "Climate change should be tackled by reducing emissions" they said, and every time he tried to get permission from governments to seed the water and cause an algal bloom, they opposed it, as did other environmental groups. A ship carrying nothing more dangerous than rust was branded by the media as carrying toxic waste.

Funny, that.. Environmentalists campaigning against a possible cure for excess CO2..?

I wonder if that's anything to do with the amount of money involved in climate change?

As Mr George put it: "The first Kyoto target is to solve 10 percent of the Co2 problem, which many people believe will cost around $400 billion. Now, suppose we come along and say we may solve 50 percent of the problem for $4 billion. If you are in a company expecting to get a slice of the $400 billion, you're going to be pissed."

There's a *huge* amount of money involved in "going green". Not just money, but influence and outright power as well. Take the USA: They're very attached to their V8s and their SUVs.

When I was in LA last year, I saw more Priuses than I could believe. And just weeks ago, I saw in the news that GM have finally ceased production of their big-block V8 after over 50 years production.

What got so many people away from V8s and into hybrids? Global warming. As Jay Leno put it, "With the prius, you can go 'Look, I am driving an unattractive car.. because I'm saving the planet.' See, in America, we like everyone to know about the good work we're doing anonymously."

Ahh, the Prius: A perfect example. Its green credentials have been brought into grave question. It's incontestible that it takes more energy to build one than other cars. Toyota still hasn't released the details about exactly how much energy it takes, but outside estimates put it at 113 million BTU's. As has been observed, there are plenty of cars, and have been for years, which get such good MPG that the Prius will never catch up - a 1994 Geo Metro XFi gets the same MPG and has a lower production energy cost, so is therefore the greener car.

A perfect example of where facts are contrary to opinions, and why you should base decisions about 'green' technology on the science and not on what "everybody knows" - the Prius is not a 'green' car, but it sells as well as it does because people believe it is.

Good intentions.. the road to Hell is paved with them.

Having said that, the basic concept of a hybrid car is one I'm all in favour of. I think technology is due for a major shift in concept very soon, and a hybrid car is an example of it.

By concept shifts, I mean the absolute basic way of thinking. For example, look back at the industrial revolution: Everything before this was done by muscle. You got from A to B by walking, or by horse if you were in a hurry. You wanted to move something, you carried it. The whole world was geared up for doing things by hand. So when the first machines came along, they still relied heavily on muscle. Machines that processed cotton had to be kept free of cotton dust by hand - usually childrens' hands. Steam trains had people on them shovelling coal. Cars were started by turning the handle by hand.

Whereas in today's world, automation is king: We try to remove people from the equation wherever possible. Humans are smart, machines are stupid; it makes sense to have people be the brains and machines as the muscle. So the car's starter handle was replaced by a starter motor, and all that you have to do now is guide the car to where you want to go.

That was a concept shift: Making machines do all the work. The next one, I think, will be making them work more efficiently. Too much of our technology assumes endless energy availability, so we're careless and we throw it away because it's easier.

e.g. you burn petrol to make your car go faster, then you burn brake pads to make it slow down. On a hybrid, though, you have regenerative braking: instead of throwing all that kinetic energy away, some of it gets saved and charges the car battery. That battery then powers a motor, which is used to reduce the amount of petrol used by the engine. More complex, but more efficient.

Heat exchangers are another good one. All the world over, we keep our houses at a different temperature to the outside: In hot places we run aircon to keep us cool, in cold places we use central heating to warm us up.

We lose a lot of energy by having to exchange the inside air for what's outside, but that's unavoidable because we need a constant supply of fresh air. So we take air in constantly, and then we have to use energy to heat or cool that incoming air.

Except we don't. It's just easier to do it like that. Easy and inefficient. It's perfectly possible to transfer the heat in one airstream to another, thus exchanging air without loosing energy. In fact, it's very easy. Check Make Magazine for a PDF that shows how to make one.

And this brings us full-circle to where we started from: An environmentally-sound GDP increase. If we keep doing more of the same, then sure, the guy had a point. Industrial activities make pollution, more industry means more pollution.

But if we do more with less, that's a very different matter. Take your house: It costs you money to run, right? Hot and cold water, comfortable air temperature, electricity for lighting..

Houses need energy, which comes from power stations. More houses means more electricity, which means more power stations. Right?

Wrong. Because there are 'green' houses all over the place that don't have energy bills. In fact, they get PAID for SUPPLYING energy.

If you have a well-insulated house with efficient technology like heat exchangers, energy-saving lightbulbs; and a solar panel or windmill or other form of alternative energy, there's no reason why you should use more power than you generate.

So if they're built with efficiency in mind, more houses means less power stations. It could even mean no power stations. The population grows but the pollution decreases. And every new unit of growth means even less pollution.

Isn't THAT what we should be aiming for?